


No Exit

by Balder12



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animal Abuse, Bunker Fic, Dark, Descent into Madness, Dubious Consent, M/M, Post-Episode: s08e23 Sacrifice, Psychological Horror, Torture, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 08:59:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balder12/pseuds/Balder12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief tour of Hell, guest-starring Sam and a chicken salad sandwich.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Exit

**Author's Note:**

> For [downjune](http://downjune.livejournal.com/)'s prompt "the devil's in the Bible belt" at [salt_burn_porn](http://salt-burn-porn.livejournal.com/)

The bunker hums. A deep, relentless electronic sound on the edge of hearing. It was silent when Kevin first stepped inside, dark and dead. When the angels fell there was a clunk and a thud, the screech of steel parts grinding to life behind the mahogany paneling.  
  
The sound is barely distinguishable in the main rooms, but it grows louder on the journey outward from the heart of the building, down through the ventricles and into the innumerable capillaries.  _Innumerable_ is the right word. Kevin’s tried to map the bunker in vain. The halls unspool, narrow and windowless, lit by warm lamplight from an untraceable source. He counts rooms, but somewhere around a hundred he always gets turned around and the tick marks he’s drawn on his arm look wrong. He miscounted. Once he tried leaving a trail of quarters, but when he doubled back they were gone. He found them days later in front of doors he’d never seen before. One day he’ll get a coil of rope long enough to thread the place from end to end.  
  
Kevin’s lying flat on the floor of the library, hands pressed against his eyes to keep the cloying, inescapable lamplight out of his brain. The bunker’s hum resonates with his headache until his skull feels like crystal just before it shatters. Somewhere beneath his head, under the layers of glossy hardwood and metal, Crowley sits. Alive, although Kevin begged the Winchesters to kill him. It wasn’t even vengeance really, so much as terror. They have a demon-proof fortress. What kind of idiot brings the king of Hell inside?  
  
The Winchesters have been bringing in people ever since, bound and gagged, wrangling them through the main rooms and down to the dungeon. Angels, they tell Kevin. The angels have taken Castiel, or the Winchesters suspect the angels have taken Castiel, or Dean has decided to believe the angels have taken Castiel. Kevin’s unclear.  
  
 _“What about the people?” Kevin says when he realizes what’s being done under his feet. “If you hurt the angels you hurt the people they’re inside, don’t you?”_  
  
 _Dean gives a speech about ends and means that Kevin doesn’t bother to listen to. Sam looks guilty. Neither of them stops._  
  
Kevin listened at the door of the dungeon once, but he didn’t hear anything. Maybe it’s soundproofed. Maybe the angels are gagged. Maybe their tongues are cut out. He wonders if the hum is louder in there, if the torture chamber glows with the same warm light as everything else. He wonders if that would be better or worse than suffering in the dark.  
  
The motto engraved over the entryway of the dungeon reads  _non timebo mala_. I shall fear no evil. If the Men of Letters had known what Kevin knows—thou art most certainly  _not_ with me—they might have had the good sense not to bring Abaddon into their lair. Kevin doesn’t trust a security system designed by people who were massacred by demons. His bedroom is an intricate network of devil’s traps and angel wards drawn on the walls in permanent marker. He sleeps in the closet, carefully sealed in with salt lines.  
  
In spite of all his caution, there are times he could swear he’s being watched, the prickle of eyes unmistakable on the back of his neck. When he turns there’s no one—no Crowley, no escaped angel dragging its intestines behind it like chains—but he knows something’s following him that even all his wards can’t keep out. Something older than a seventeenth century tailor with a small dick, something with malice uncolored by personality, as cold and implacable as the turning of steel wheels.  
  
 _“What did they tell you guys about this place when they gave you the key?” Kevin says as Dean dumps a metal tray of bloody tools into the sink. Dean was always kind of an asshole, but he’s changed since he’s been down in the dungeon. He’s got a shark’s eyes. Kevin doesn’t like to talk to him anymore, but he needs to know._  
  
 _Dean doesn’t look up from the reddish stream of water. “Throw it in. Shut the door forever. And walk away.”_  
  
 _Kevin had suspected as much. “Maybe you should have.”_  
  
Footsteps enter the library, the sound tapping against his skull. Kevin looks up from the floor at a pair of denim-clad legs. Sam. Not a threat. Kevin shuts his eyes again.  
  
“Headache?” Sam asks in his concerned teacher voice. Kevin doesn’t reward that bit of condescension with an answer. They’ve exchanged a half dozen drunken, impulsive blow jobs since Kevin’s been in the bunker.  While they're happening Sam’s a sledgehammer of intensity, pure focus. But when it’s done Sam loses interest agonizingly fast, abruptly polite and embarrassed before he wanders off to find something more worthy of his attention. By the next time they see each other Sam’s benign indifference is firmly back in place, interrupted only by sporadic attempts to be the Michelle Pfeiffer to Kevin’s troubled youth.  
  
Sam sits down on the floor and rests his hand on Kevin’s forehead. “I made you a sandwich.” Sam’s hand is gentle, and Kevin feels the cold thrill of fear he gets whenever one of the Winchesters is too nice to him without an obvious motive. Kevin opens his eyes again and studies the slope of Sam’s shoulder. Real Sam or demon Sam? There’s always a danger that the bunker will be swapped out for an imitation when Kevin isn’t paying attention. The edited memories Crowley gave him in the fake houseboat lacked the in-between parts of life—the walking down hallways and turning doorknobs bits—so when Kevin starts to suspect there’s been an edit in reality he traces back the actions that brought him to this moment. As long as he remembers hallways and doorknobs he’s all right. Right now, though, his memory is only giving him static images. As far as he can tell he was in his bedroom and then he was here in the library. He’s pretty sure it’s just the headache and the Vicodin he took for it that’s erased the walk between them. This is probably the real Sam. But Kevin’s not 100% convinced, and if it’s a demon then he ought to play along.  
  
Kevin sits up, but the motion sends a knife through the back of his skull and he ends up hunched over, resting his head on his knees.  
  
Sam rubs Kevin’s back reassuringly and the probability that he’s a demon increases slightly. “When was the last time you ate?”  
  
“I don’t remember.” Kevin doesn’t bother with clocks anymore. There are no windows, so day and night are the same. He eats when he’s hungry and he sleeps when the painkillers and whiskey knock him out. He can tell you how long ago something happened as measured in pizza rolls or sleep periods, but he doesn’t tally them, so after the first few it just becomes “awhile.” For all he knows time has stopped altogether. It’s not important. He’s not waiting for anything.  
  
Probably-Sam pushes the plate toward Kevin. “Eat it. It might help with the headache.” If Sam’s a demon Kevin should placate him, and if Sam’s Sam then Kevin doesn’t want to discourage the attention. He pokes the sandwich skeptically. It’s a gooey white mass of shredded meat.  
  
“Chicken salad,” Probably-Sam says.  
  
Kevin supposes he’s not a vegan anymore—when he was digging through trashcans for food it was impossible, and by the time he could have tried he was past caring—but the word “chicken” triggers the memory of an animal rights video he saw when he was thirteen of live chicks spiraling down a funnel into a meat grinder. The image flips into a knife slicing his finger clean off, which flips into his mother’s body getting eaten by insects because he never found her to put her in the ground. He never knows these days when his brain’s going to decide to screen a horror show behind his eyelids.  
  
He shoves the plate away. “I can’t.” He swallows down bile. His head throbs with the hum of the bunker.  
  
“It’s all right,” probably-Sam says. “Come here.”  
  
He pulls Kevin up against him, back to chest, settling Kevin between his legs. Kevin tenses. If there’s any chance this Sam is a demon Kevin doesn’t want to touch him. He hunts for a reason to pick an argument, a way to run off probably-Sam without tipping his hand. Then probably-Sam strokes Kevin’s hair, and the sleeve of his flannel shirt brushes Kevin’s face. There’s a neat crescent of blood darkening the underside. Kevin flinches and then relaxes. No demon who’d gone to the trouble of creating a fake bunker to win Kevin’s trust would walk into it covered in blood. This has to be Sam, just up from the dungeon. The thought should put Kevin off, but he’s too relieved to care.  
  
“Have you figured out where Castiel is?” Kevin says. He’s lost track of how long the Winchesters have been collecting angels. It’s been awhile.  
  
“We’re working on it.” Sam rubs Kevin’s temples. “You don’t need to worry about it right now. Let me make you feel better.” He presses his thumbs in under Kevin’s skull and gradually works the knots out of his back. The force of Sam’s hands is a sweet pain that drowns out everything else. Maybe it’s the massage and maybe it’s the painkillers he took earlier, but the headache recedes. Eventually Sam’s just petting him, slow and careful, caressing his arms and chest, running a finger along the edge of his jaw. Sam’s never been like this with Kevin before. It's always grab, kiss, mouth, cock. They’ve managed to have sex several times without touching most of each other’s bodies. Before Sam, Kevin had barely touched another human being in months. Years, maybe.  _Awhile_. It’s like water after a long time thirsty.  
  
When Sam’s hand finally goes to the button on Kevin’s jeans he says, “Okay?”  
  
Kevin can only moan in wordless agreement. He buries his face in Sam’s shirt, hidden away from the light, and Sam’s other hand cradles the back of his head. The warm human rhythm of Sam’s breathing and heart drowns out the hum of the bunker, and for an instant time starts up again and Kevin  _wants_.  
  
Afterward Kevin’s limp and boneless. He longs to stay curled up in Sam’s arms. He gets thirty seconds before Sam gently detaches himself.  
  
“Feeling better?” Sam says from far above. Kevin studies Sam’s face. Polite concern and rising boredom. He’s already moving on, his mind turning back to matters more important than Kevin. Every matter is more important than Kevin. Malice twists in his gut and he grabs Sam’s sleeve like he’s looking at it for the first time.  
  
“Whose blood is this?” he says. Sam cringes like he’s been caught out. “Do you even know the names of their vessels?” Kevin couldn’t care less about the answer to that question right now, but his anger still feels righteous.  
  
Sam’s lips move like he’s forming the first word of a defense, but after a moment he stops, stumped. “No. No I don’t.” He walks out before Kevin can think of anything to say.  
  
Kevin regrets what he did as soon as Sam’s out of his line of sight. He’s got the urge to run after him and apologize. He wants to tell Sam that this isn’t a good place, that they shouldn’t be here, that they can all still leave. They’ll find Cas some other way.  
  
 _Leave_. Kevin tries to imagine it, but he’s alone now and the hum is back. Somewhere overhead there are trees and grass and sky and smiling people pouring chicks into a meat grinder by the barrel. But when you peel away the skin of the world, underneath is the light and the hum forever. Peel away the skin again and at the bottom of everything is the king, his fallen angels, and the poor souls of the damned who don’t even have a voice to scream. Three different circles, but only one place. There is no leaving. He sinks back onto the floor, defeated, the words already disappearing from his mind. He hums under his breath until he falls into tune.


End file.
